Supply Chain Management with Lean Production and Rfid Application

Expert Systems with Applications 40 (2013) 3389–3397

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Expert Systems with Applications

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/eswa

Supply chain management with lean production and RFID application: A case study

James C. Chen a,⇑, Chen-Huan Cheng b, PoTsang B. Huang b

a

b

Department of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, ROC

Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Chung-Yuan Christian University, Taoyuan, Taiwan, ROC

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Keywords:

RFID

Lean production

Supply chain management

a b s t r a c t

This study applies lean production and radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies to improve the

efficiency and effectiveness of supply chain management. In this study, a three-tier spare parts supply

chain with inefficient transportation, storage and retrieval operations is investigated. Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is used to draw current state mapping and future state mapping (with lean production and

RFID) with material, information, and time flows. Preliminary experiments showed that the total operation time can be saved by 81% from current stage to future stage with the integration of RFID and lean.

Moreover, the saving in total operation time can be enhanced to 89% with cross docking. In addition, utilizing RFID technology, the cost of labors can be significantly reduced while maintaining current service

capacity at the members in the studied supply chain. Return-on-investment (ROI) analysis shows that the

proposed method is both effective and feasible.

Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Substantial competition force companies to ensure customers’

demands can be satisfied as much as possible at the lowest cost.

Therefore, companies attempt to develop new solutions to improve

the quality of their supply chains and simultaneously reduce their

operational costs. In the past decades, radio frequency...